The sixth week is half way to the end, and things became a little lighter, time speeding fast again. I could almost smell the odor of good-bye to the people with whom I am getting acquainted and affected.
Last Saturday was supposed to be a big day for me. That very day cut off my life of teens and officially announced that a most wonderful and important stage came upon my feet. Now I can proudly say, I was no longer a little girl but an adult woman who has just reached her twenty!
My special day slipped away, though,, through the normal daytime activities. No one even mentioned the word "birthday" during the morning hours, though everybody knew what that day was. Youngest Aunt said something like "wish you a happy birthday" in the late afternoon, but that was when I had had a very bad mood with Mother's unreasonable complaint, and I tried extremely hard suppressing tears when hearing her birthday remark. Around thirty past five we set off to the restaurant where Uncle invited all of the family members to have a birthday dinner.
Rather it looked more like a get-together meal than a birthday dinner. A few "Happy Birthdays" were drummed out by roars of laughter and talk. It seemed that everyone was reluctant to accept that I turned twenty. Uncle Tang asked me whether it was my nineteenth birthday. Aunt Chen pulled me aside by her after dinner and asked me in what she thought caring tone to work out hard to get further improvements on my arms, to think more about the future, and to care about Mother. She spoke in a way that she thought I was only ten.
The two cousins jumped around to set the cake and lit candle seconds after we got back. Barely had I finished my birthday wishes when the light came back on and a knife poked right into the heart of the cake. No Happy Birthday Song sung or played, no Happy Birthday greetings shouted across the room. There seemed to be only one aim: to eat the cake.
The phone rang after I finished my serving of the cake. On the other end of the line was Father's voice. He was a bit of shy, but after passing on to me my friend Summer Rain's birthday greetings I kept teasing him. At last he mumbled Happy Birthday under his breath.
It was a special birthday after all, because no one turned twenty twice, and hearing a father say his first Happy Birthday to his daughter from a city thousands of miles away was really something to remember.
The next day as we all hoped was an ideal day to enjoy the great outdoors. Not to miss such a good day, we decided to visit a botanical garden located in the suburb. It is the first botanical garden I've visited that has got nothing but gentle slopes and mountains, greenery everywhere. It is not only a relaxation area, but also a Chinese medicine plantation. So the park is called Guiyang Botanical Park for Chinese Medicine Plants.
It could have been a real birthday treat if I had been born one day later. The entrance looked somewhat shabby, but the view beyond it jumped in front us as a gorgeous lady in yellow-dotted green fur dress. Fallen leaves scattered the meadow slopes that ran gently and slowly up and down. Whenever and wherever you looked up, mountains and hills at a distance would catch your eye. Trees and grass of various kinds wrapped them so well that not a single patch of earth was to be seen. Sitting on the grass and feeling the refreshing damp beneath me, I was simply reminded that in the same time of the year Father was alone enjoying snowflakes in Urumqi and I, with many others, was exclaiming the beauty of the fall. The autumn in Guiyang was just stealing extra time from winter.
We started our exploration from where a statue stands on a clearing of a meadow, facing the garden gate in a short distance. The statue, representing Shen Nong, a legendary figure in the field of Chinese medicine, also known as God of Medicine, is 2 or 3 meters tall. Slightly positioning its head backwards, it holds something very similar to corns in its right hand, with its left hand grabbing the plant's root, as if the plant were a costly treasure that needed to be protected in both hands. It wears rags whose lower half rises up in the air. Its lower part of the body was carelessly covered up with a giant leaf. Two strong legs and feet are bare and separated as wide as the shoulders. Its facial expression goes perfectly well with its whole gestures, solemnly excited with eyebrows raised.
The road before the statue diverges in a parabolic curve upward, and we set off on the right side. Soon we came to a flight of stone steps on the right, also leading up to the top of the garden. Tempted, Mother and I turned to climb while the old and the young continued their way up on the well-paved road.
The steps turned and turned and turned, until we reached the top. Tired and sweaty, I was happy that I had chosen right. I wouldn't have felt accomplished if I had chosen the road to wander along with the other less-able family members. Neither would I have seen many plants used in Chinese medicine. I saw and felt what the other people wouldn't see or feel when they chose the easier approach to the top. That's exactly what being twenty is all about.
The two groups gathered and lingered there, waiting for another aunt of mine and her son to come joining us from the other end of the city. Time didn't slow down as we were busy enjoying the view and taking photos. In what seemed like a few minutes they arrived. After greetings and chitchats, the mother suggested having snacks at a lawn. So we went down a bit to find a nice grassplot. Trees behind, we sat down and nibbled time away.
My stomach, however, didn't allow me to eat. For the whole week it didn't work properly. Without much food digested I felt as if a hundred pound of weight were glued to each of my legs. But before lunch I conquered another mountain with Mother, and this time no steps or paved path. It was the highest and wildest in the garden.
When we returned, the lunch began in a hotel near the lawn where we took our snacks. The meal looked good, but I scarcely ate anything. I would have preferred sitting somewhere else to do nothing, but I knew I wasn't home. I was in a group. I wouldn't spoil the wonderful weather, the prefect day and most important of all, the high spirits of my relatives.
An hour or so passed when Grandma, the second aunt and her son, Mother and I set off to explore the rest of the garden, while the others took afternoon naps in the hotel. Soon Grandma stopped as the road became dangerous for people her age.
We descended past the hotel, meandering through trees and lawns, down to a small pond, and then followed a path that led to a bridge. Down below spread a long narrow swamp valley where bunches of weeds grew here and there.
It wasn't a bridge that you'd normally see in metropolises. Nor does it look like any bridge across rivers or brooks in the northern part of China. The bridge we were heading for has got a name: Fengyu Bridge, a speciality of the minority group of Dong. In English it literally means Bridge of Wind and Rain.
The bridge cannot control the forces of nature, of course, but it does the job to keep out wind and rain. To be in a bridge that has got a ceiling was novel to me. Vistas all around were catching my eye, but I took my eyes off to examine the roof in white above and the pillars in red alongside. There were quite a few heavy wooden roof beams in vertical and horizontal placement to form many concave rectangles. Each beam was painted in various colors and patterns. Everywhere else inside the bridge was all scarlet. I followed my eyes down and saw two long planks on each side to make good seats, behind them woody railings used as the backs of the seats. The wooden floor was creaking and humming as I walked onto it. Despite the fact that the bridge was built up all with wood, I believed that it would stand firmly in wind and rain for many years to come.
I did a double take over my shoulder when we left the bridge and headed onward. It would have been identical to a typical Chinese garden corridor if there had not been three towers poking into the air, the one in the middle bigger and higher. The small towers were consisted of four layers with four white symbols on each tip pointing upward, and the big one of six layers with the same symbols and a red calabash sticking on the top. Red pillars, gray canopy, and white roof edges make the bridge glow with natural elegance and muscular strength.
We continued to walk down on the edge of the valley. Through the mud, past the weeds, onto the mounds, soon we came to a dead end. Once again pushed and pulled on the same route back, I returned with no stumbles or bruises, which was quite a miracle according to my records.
Everybody was wide awake when we got to the hotel. After taking a short rest, we were ready to leave with the rest of the people.
Little effort was involved when descending to the entrance as we followed the group on the main road. But I found every bit of energy draining out of me since my stomach was now completely empty (I vomited hard when in the valley).
By the time we left the garden for a restaurant nearby, the sun was also leaving us for the other part of the world. Turning around to take a look one more time at the shabby-looking entrance in dusk, I sensed something. Something that made my insides, despite the empty stomach, full of accomplishing feelings. Something that made the whole day, despite my heavy steps, pleasant with mountain discoveries and without climbing accidents.
Later, as I figured out, the "something" was nothing but the determination to be happy and to be safe. For the sake of me. For the sake of the people who see me as an apple of their eye.
